Washington D.C., May 20, 2021 / 16:02 pm America/Denver (CNA). Catholics must be mindful of the humanity on both sides of conflict in Israel and Gaza, said a top official at a global Catholic aid […]
Secretary of State of the Holy See Cardinal Pietro Parolin during his official visit to Kiev, 2017. / Shutterstock.
Vatican City, May 19, 2021 / 05:00 am (CNA).
The Vatican Secretary of State said Tuesday that the Holy See is committed to doing … […]
Pope Francis meets with Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, on May 17, 2021. / Vatican Media/CNA.
Vatican City, May 17, 2021 / 10:30 am (CNA).
Pope Francis spoke Monday with Iran’s foreign minister and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan amid the ongoing diplomatic efforts to end the violence in the Israel-Gaza conflict.
The pope received Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s head diplomat since 2013, for a private audience on May 17 in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.
Zarif said that he and the pope “exchanged views” on Palestine, interfaith dialogue, and U.S. sanctions in a post on Twitter.
The Iranian government delegation also met with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Secretary for Relations with States.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni confirmed that Pope Francis also spoke on the telephone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the morning of May 17.
According to a statement from the Turkish president’s office, Erdogan told Pope Francis “that Palestinians would continue to be subjected to massacre as long as the international community did not punish Israel – which is committing humanitarian crimes – with sanctions.”
The Vatican did not comment on the content of the discussions in either the phone call with Erdogan or the meeting with Zarif.
Israel’s Ambassador to Italy responded to the Iranian foreign minister’s visit to Rome with an open letter to Zarif accusing Iran of funding and supporting Hamas.
“Why don’t you recognize Israel’s right to exist? Stop spreading hatred,” Ambassador Dror Eydar wrote.
“The question is: when will the West realize that behind the elegant suits, ties and smiles lies a murderous ideology that seeks to erase all of Western civilization? It is necessary to wake up,” the Israeli ambassador said.
Pope Francis appealed for an end to violence in the Israel-Gaza conflict at the end of his Regina Caeli address on May 16.
“In these days, violent armed clashes between the Gaza Strip and Israel have taken hold, and risk degenerating into a spiral of death and destruction. Numerous people have been injured, and many innocents have died,” the pope said.
“Among them there are also children, and this is terrible and unacceptable. Their death is a sign that one does not want to build the future, but wants to destroy it.”
The pope also lamented intercommunal violence involving Jews and Arabs within Israel.
He said: “Furthermore, the crescendo of hatred and violence that is affecting various cities in Israel is a serious wound to fraternity and peaceful coexistence among citizens, which will be difficult to heal if there is not an immediate opening to dialogue.”
“I ask myself: where will hatred and revenge lead? Do we really think we will build peace by destroying the other?”
He appealed for calm in the region, urging local leaders and the international community to help secure peace.
“Let us pray unceasingly that Israelis and Palestinians may find the path of dialogue and forgiveness, to be patient builders of peace and justice, opening up, step by step, to a common hope, to a coexistence among brothers,” Pope Francis said.
Pope Francis delivers a Regina Coeli address at the Vatican. / Vatican Media.
CNA Staff, May 16, 2021 / 06:31 am (CNA).
Pope Francis made an impassioned appeal Sunday for an end to surging violence in the Holy Land.Speaking after the recitation … […]
Readings: • Acts 9:26-31 • Ps 22:26-27, 28, 30, 31-32 • 1 Jn 3:18-24 • Jn 15:1-8 Vineyards were an integral part of the agricultural life of ancient Israel. They were common throughout the land, […]
CNA Staff, Jan 24, 2021 / 06:01 am (CNA).- A group of Christian leaders who advocate for the Holy Land this week reiterated a call for Israeli and Palestinian authorities to negotiate directly for the sake of peace in the region. They also encouraged Israel to make COVID-19 vaccines accessible to Palestinians.
The Holy Land Coordination group, which was founded by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, is comprised of bishops from the U.S. and Europe, as well as a bishop of the Church of England. Since 2000, the group has taken an annual trip to the Holy Land, and promotes awareness, action, and prayer for the region.
During the bishops’ January 2020 trip, they visited Christians in Gaza, East Jerusalem, and Ramallah. The bishops met virtually in January 2021 with Christians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel.
Due to the pandemic, this year is the first since the group’s founding that the bishops have not been able to meet in the Holy Land.
“The Christian community, though small, is an important guarantor of social cohesion and a bearer of hope for a better future. We eagerly await a time when Christians from across the world can once again make pilgrimages to the Holy Land to witness and support this first-hand. Until that point, we encourage our communities to provide any assistance that may be possible and hold all the region’s peoples in our prayers,” the group wrote in a Jan. 22 communiqué.
The delegation included Bishop David Malloy of Rockford, chairman of the USCCB Committee on International Justice and Peace.
The delegation noted that the absence of pilgrims to the Holy Land in the past year has exacerbated unemployment and poverty.
The bishops concluded that these factors, along with continuing political conflict, culminate to mean, “there is today less cause for optimism than at any time in recent history.”
Security borders have impaired Palestinians’ ability to work and travel, including travel to Muslim and Christian holy places, while Jewish settlements in the West Bank are a continuing source of tension.
Israel suspended the annexation of some parts of the West Bank during August 2020 as part of its normalization of relations with the United Arab Emirates, but tensions remain.
“The lack of political progress, along with relentless expansion of illegal settlements and the impact of Israel’s Nation-State law, continues to erode any prospect of a peaceful two-state solution,” the bishops wrote.
The “nation-state law” refers to a 2018 measure which defined Israel as the “historic homeland of the Jewish people” who have “a singular right to national self-determination within it.” The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem has criticized the law as discriminatory against Israel’s Christians.
The bishops also encouraged Israel to make COVID-19 vaccines accessible for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has one of the highest per-capita rates of COVID-19 vaccination in the world, but until this week was not allowing vaccines into Gaza or the West Bank.
The Vatican recognized the state of Palestine during May 2015. During May 2020, the Holy See reaffirmed its support of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, and respect for the borders internationally recognized before 1967.
In a July 2020 statement, released in response to possible Israeli action to annex Palestinian territories, the Holy See reiterated that Israel and the State of Palestine “have the right to exist and to live in peace and security, within internationally recognized borders.”
Then-US president Donald Trump and Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu in January 2020 proposed a two-state peace plan for Israel and Palestine, which included an independent Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem.
Trump insisted that Jerusalem would also remain “Israel’s undivided— very important— undivided capital.” The United States moved its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in 2017.
Under the plan, none of Jerusalem’s Old City or territory within the current security wall would be ceded to the Palestinian state. The agreement also preserves the status quo policy regarding control of various religious sites, including the site of the Temple Mount and Al Aqsa Mosque, and, under the proposal, Muslims would still have access to the site.
Trump’s proposal for peace called for the creation of a Palestinian state, but gave Israel sovereignty over 30% of the West Bank. The Palestinians reject this.
Palestinian leaders, the United Nations, and European and Arab countries oppose unilateral action from Israel and consider Israeli settlements on land captured in 1967 to be illegal, Reuters reports. Israelis who back annexation cite biblical, historical, and political roots in the West Bank territory.
The plan also proposes the construction of a “West Bank-Gaza Tunnel” to connect the two halves of Palestine, and that a third of the Gaza Strip be designated as a “high-tech manufacturing industrial zone.”
As part of the plan, Trump also pledged money to the Palestinian state for job creation and poverty reduction. Trump said that if Abbas and the Palestinian Authority “choose the path to peace,” that the United States and other countries “will be there, we will be there to help you in so many different ways.”
Newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden is likely to reverse some of Trump’s policies in the Middle East, pledging as a candidate to restore humanitarian aid to Palestinians and opposing Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, NPR reports.
On the Readings for Sunday, November 26, 2017, The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe […]
On August 5th, Pew Research Center released a survey that found that a majority of Catholics don’t believe that Jesus Christ is truly present in the Holy Eucharist—Body, Blood, soul, and divinity. I became aware […]
Thank God we are not living in the dispensation of karma, for who of us would be able to stand in the fierce winds of […]
In this twenty-first century, we are no less tempted to domesticate God, and thus to sink into a shallow religious indifference or insouciance, than our […]
© Catholic World Report